Una Maestra Excelente

In school, it always helps when you have a teacher who truly cares about all of their students and their success in and out of the classroom. The teachers who stand out in everyone's minds are the teachers who go out of their way to help their students and to make their class more enjoyable. One teacher who stands out in my mind as being a compassionate teacher is my high school Spanish teacher. For the two years that she was my Spanish teacher, there was never a dull moment in that classroom. You could always hear what was going on in her room from the other end of the hall because it was such an energetic classroom. She was able to make learning a second language so much fun for the students.

We not only learned the language, but we also learned about the culture by cooking, celebrating holidays, and learning about different Spanish speaking countries. One of the most interesting ways that we learned about other cultures was having amity teachers come into our school each year. We had amiy teachers from all over South America and Spain. About once a week, our amity teacher would teach us about their home country and culture or we would do some kind of activity. One day we even learned different kinds of dances! My Spanish teacher went out of her way to expose us to as many different Spanish speaking cultures as possible.

She did more than just teach us in the classroom. She was always willing to help us outside of class and a few days a week she set up a time for students to get together to practice having conversations in Spanish before the school day started. She did whatever she could to help us succeed in learning a second language. She is such a friendly person and she always seemed to put a smile on everyone's face. She always had students in her room, even when she didn't have class. She was so much fun to be around and everyone loved having her as a teacher. She did so much more than just teaching us the vocabulary and giving tests. She challenged us, but helped guide us through those challenges so that we could succeed on our own. She taught us so much more than I would have ever expected.

After my sophomore year in high school, she decided to leave her job at Zumbrota-Mazeppa High School so she could spend more time with her family. After that, Spanish was not the same without her and it was not nearly as exciting and interesting. Even though she no longer taught at my high school, she always kept in touch with our other teachers in the high school so they were always updating us on what was going on in her life. During my Junior and Senior year, she came to all of the big events at our school like our graduation. We were all so excited to see her at our graduation because she was such an important part of our high school years and she showed us that we were still an important part of her life. We all continue to learn from teachers like my Spanish teacher, even when we are no longer in their classroom. We remember all of the things that they did for us and when going into a career in teaching, I want to have the compassion for my students that she had for us.